Announcing our 2020 Best Small Fictions Nominees
great weather for MEDIA is delighted to announce our nominations for the 2020 Best Small Fictions.
These nominations are for work under 1000 words and were chosen from our anthology Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea.
Congratulations and best of luck to all our fabulous nominees!
Tanya Ko Hong - The Crying Game
Denise Tolan - A Very Short History of Abuse
Tamia Williams - I'd Rather Have Weeds
Francine Witte - Daddy sits us all at the table
Annie Woods - 2003
Want a taster? Here are the first few lines...
“November outside Saratoga Springs / over coffee at the Red Roof Inn you say, We’re leaving for Florida / snapshots cross my mind / race cars crash on a track / No, my voice shakes into a laugh / shocked by answer / hurricane fists and broken glass / I catch the danger in your eyes / Eleven minutes, we’re leaving / you slam the bathroom door / I grab your .38 / from the nightstand drawer / ”
“I was the only one my father never hit.
I asked my mother why.
You were born under a lucky star, she said.
Is that all I get from the star? I wondered.”
“Under the harsh but nurturing sun, the gardener wields his timeless scythe along the tops of plant beds, hitting the sunflowers and skipping the daisies in his own perception of beauty like prophetic Apollo who believes in his own visions and versions that tell the difference between grace and grass. I once believed my African hair had to be flowers.
They’re rooted. Brown lines birthed from my brown dirt, smooth but furry top-side with moisture deep within. The roots dig in, clutching at the inner-skin, tall. thick. deep. My curls hold strong. Un-uprootable. This trait of clawing…refusing to relinquish its hold on the African dirt, clawing its way to the top on American soil…caused hints of pain as Mother pushed the purple wide-toothed comb in to straighten…to assimilate…the unbending strands.”
“Daddy sits us all at the table and tries to tell us about life. He starts with an orange. My mother had put a bunch of them in a bowl, all nice and hilly, before she left us for good. Now they were nothing but brown little stones.
’You see this orange,’ he says anyway. ‘It started out juicy and full of hope.’
’Excuse me,’ my soon-dead brother, Billy, says. ‘How can an orange be filled with hope?’ This was a fair question, but I suspect it’s the kind that will eventually get him killed.”
“Haribo Gummi Bears have pig bones in them. They do. Haribo Gummi Bears contain gelatin, which is crushed pig. People are grossed out by that, but they eat ham and pork and bacon. It’s the meat we’re okay with.
I’d always bite the head off first. That’s just how you eat gummy bears. In eighth grade, we stuck them together, bear-dick to bear-gina, and made kissy noises, made moans we didn’t understand yet. On the band bus, we’d stick their flat backs against windows and made bets on whose would stay the longest, on the strongest bear. ”
Remember, we are currently accepting poetry and prose submissions for our next anthology. Send us your fearless best! Deadline January 15, 2020. Be sure to check out all our books. We look forward to reading your work.